James Bond had his 10th outing in this epic affair, which ushered in the new era of Bond as not just over the top but rather way, way, way over it. How far? The Spy Who Loved Me has Jaws, a villain that feeds detractors to sharks (in his underwater lair, of course), a gorgeous Russian spy (Barbara Bach) who helps Bond, stolen nuclear missiles, a scene in Egypt that -- in a rare moment of Bondian genius -- borrows the score from Lawrence of Arabia, and perhaps the best Bond gadget of all time: A Lotus that can turn into a submarine. I loved Spy so much in the 1980s (on video) that I lusted over Lotus catalogs. Oddly, I never found the sub option inside.

This is near-camp and its success sent a strong message to its producers about what audiences wanted to see: Bigger, bolder, louder, sexier. The next 10 films that followed simply one-upped this formula over and over again. Amazing.

James Bond had his 10th outing in this epic affair, which ushered in the new era of Bond as not just over the top but rather way, way, way over it. How far? The Spy Who Loved Me has Jaws, a villain that feeds detractors to sharks (in his underwater lair, of course), a gorgeous Russian spy (Barbara Bach) who helps Bond, stolen nuclear missiles, a scene in Egypt that -- in a rare moment of Bondian genius -- borrows the score from Lawrence of Arabia, and perhaps the best Bond gadget of all time: A Lotus that can turn into a submarine. I loved Spy so much in the 1980s (on video) that I lusted over Lotus catalogs. Oddly, I never found the sub option inside.

This is near-camp and its success sent a strong message to its producers about what audiences wanted to see: Bigger, bolder, louder, sexier. The next 10 films that followed simply one-upped this formula over and over again. Amazing.

It's another Planet of the Apes/The Time Machine redux as a stuffy scientist (Peter Cushing) and a cowboy-inspired rich guy (Doug McClure) set off in an oversized drill/spaceship en route for the center of the earth. Of course, all kinds of creatures live there, namely large dodo-dinosaur hybrids, their monkey-pig underlings, and a humanoid race of slaves under their thumb. They even speak the Queen's English. While the fire effects are cool, the creatures are unilaterally awful. For 1976, an effects-driven film needs an awful lot more than plastic masks and stop-motion winking. Oh, and the script is lifeless, to boot.

Nothing dates your movie faster than putting the year in the title, and for some reason, Dracula movies attract this special folly. Dracula A.D. 1972 (helpfully noting that we're not dealing with some Babylonian Dracula in 1972 B.C.) finds Dracula (Christopher Lee) revived -- inexplicably, by mixing its metaphors and having a group of devil worshippers resurrecting him -- and hanging out with his cronies in swingin' London, where he feasts on boxum gals in low-cut tops when he's not being pursued by the progeny of Van Helsing (Peter Cushing). Rather awful, this is one of the sadder entries in the Dracula canon, offering nothing much that's new to the genre.